Adventures of Mr.Behi

The City of Peace and Justice

Maybe it is the work of the little peace dove of my blog that we ended up in The Hague, city of peace, justice and security. Everyday that I go to work, I witness press vans and TV cameras lined up -or I would better say camped- in front of the UN detention center, waiting to sweep any news about the new prisoner, Radovan Karadzic. It is at least a good thing that there is a place in the world for war criminals to end up! but the hope remains that the ideology behind such genocides would also be imprisoned, something that is proven wrong over and over through the course of history.

I remember the Bosnia ethnic war vividly. Inside Iran, the government was passionately acting for the Muslim side. TV was full of documentaries about the war and as we heard, the Iranian revolutionary guard was actually involved in supplying aids. The government just ignored to cover the fact that Russia was backing the other side of the war. Perhaps as Iran is the enemy of the US, Russia should be kept happy! Politicians have indeed an unfair/biased account of world conflicts which is very irritating.

Apart from a little bottle-neck in traffic made by the news vans, it is good to see the international criminal court doing its job. Although there would be no news crew if it had not been a genocide to trial someone for. One could feel much better then but for now, it is good that the bus passes through natural woods after the prison for some peace.

Tripoli to The Hague via Tehran

It is a couple of days now since we finally arrived to The Hague in The Netherlands after a short stay in Iran. We went through an overwhelming amount of work and extremely busy planning to get over the two movements back to back and it is not over at all. Almost one and a half years living in Tripoli is now only a memory with all the sweet and swore moments and we are very happy for the change we unleashed in our lives, both the time when we went there and now that we left it.

It was nice to get back to Tehran after a couple of months. The lively city as we always knew it, was and still is experiencing a new level of heat this summer. We were there to watch the pictures of the new Iranian missile test filling the front page in all the news stands. The nuclear issue, although brings new waves of fear and rays of hope every now and then, it feels as if it is becoming like so many slogans the system has been broadcasting for years, so much heard. Like the background noise of Tehran highways.

I had some fun this time with the Iranian customs: We had like 200 kgs of stuff that we shipped by air from Libya. One day I went with the shipping agent to clear the goods and bring them home. The airport customs was the circus of financial corruption and perhaps the most corruption I had ever seen all in one place. The shipping agent already knew his way and I could see him slipping money to: The front gate keeper, the second gate keeper, the third gate keeper, the worker who opened the box, the agent who checked the box, the lifter driver who lifted the box, the truck driver who carried the box, the shipment supervisor who certified the box, the agent who released the box and then again on the way out, the third gate keeper, the second gate keeper and the first gate keeper! 

Those of you who know me from this blog for a while must have read so many stories of mine applying for visas. As if there is no way for me to get one without a little clinch. Our visas to the Netherlands were already issued when we got to Iran but we had to wait for another two weeks to get the stickers. On the due date and after waiting in line for like 8 hours, I discovered that I was given a nine days visa instead of a 90 days! That resulted in another day of 8 hours waiting to get it corrected. It kept us in anxiety till the last working day before the flight.

Now we are in The Hague. I have already started in my new job and in the past couple of days, we had the paper work with the immigration. We are living in a temporary place in Scheveningen which is a very neat district near the beach. Our search for a place to rent has started but not with much luck yet. The city has so many good things to like. It is very well maintained with a great public transport working round the clock. Bikes are so widespread and we can not wait to get ours. Let's see first when we can get our place to say.